Hello everybody and what a day it has been in the Tri State Area. The
weather is doing a great job again with coming on a Saturday totally
avoiding the school week. See on Monday it's my birthday and you know
how f-in cool it would be to have my birthday off. One year we had a
blizzard and they called us in and said, "You have the whole week off
for the snow, except the 22nd, which is my birthday. That was as cheap
as Courtney Love doing a new movie. Well actually today it's my mom's
birthday and its going good for her because we don't have to go to
church.

Churchlady: Sinners.

Hey come on can't you see the weather is bad out and did I mention
Church for my sister and I is cancelled today so that means no Sunday
School for us.

Roxbury Guys: Score, very nice.

I agree guys. Okay let me just talk about tonight's show. As you can
tell it's the 21st of January and Clinton is out of office. Well I can
say this as a fact here cause without Clinton and that whole Monica
Lewinsky thing, SNL would be without the 98-99 season. Look at some of
the shows from that season. Colin had a report on him every week and the
opening was basically only Darrel opening the show for more than half of
the season. Also John Goodman would not have been on maybe 5 of the
shows he played Linda Tripp. The most memorable of his appearances was
when she and Monica pigged out on the phone with each other. That's a
classic sketch. Well that season was so filled with Clinton jokes and
making fun of politics that we forgot about the famous hosts that
season. Academy Award winners, old cast members, and surprise guests
stood on that Studio 8H stage. The reason I brought this up was on
behalf of Clinton leaving office after 8 years and I wrote this just too
admire how much SNL brought such classic Clinton sketches, even going
back to Phil Hartman taking over the Oval Office and then forgettable
Mike Mckean took over the role in the season of 94-95 and then Darrell
took over the role, then literally SNL became popular again with a
president.

Okay let me just add that ever since January began there have been 6
updates from Sean. If Sean were reading this I'd like to say thanks for
keeping me up to date on my favorite show. It's really cool to see
something new about the show every day. I don't think there have been
this many updates in a month since the first 2 years of Updates on this
site. Okay now onto the review.

Before Thoughts: Mena Suveri and Lenny Kravitz on tonight's show sounded
really good when I first heard about it. I have heard of Mena from
American Pie fame and American Beauty. Next she is playing a cheerleader
in the movie Sugar and Spice. More on that later. Check out Interlude 2
for that. Lenny Kravitz is very popular lately with all of his hit songs
on his latest album. I know he came out with a Greatest Hits Album.
Check out Interlude 2 for more on him. Okay with tonight being the last
opening for Clinton, unless he pulls a Norm and play Bob Dole till late
'97, we should be seeing a lot more of Clinton in some George W. Bush
sketches later this year. And onto the review.

Just one more thing. I'm dedicating this review to my mom in recognition
it is her birthday on the 21st and actually mine is the 22nd, so enjoy
the review mom.

Opening: Bill Clinton's final skit (yeah right, he'll be on Mango skits)
Okay I'm working on writing a real title (a la Mark Polishuk) cause all
I write is the name of the certain person in skits so just give me a few
weeks to get in the right title area. Okay this was a great opening for
2 reasons. Number 1 he hasn't done the opening since last season. Number
2 its better to see this than an average opening with Cheney (such as
last week.) This skit got actually better when George W. came in, but
you had to think he was going to come in and say something dumb. Did
they know they were both wearing the same color ties?
Grade: A

Interlude: by me
I hope that Darrel doesn't leave the show since Clinton is done, just as
Dana Carvey did back in '93 when Bush was done. It'd be a shame to see
such a great impersonator leave.

Monologue: Mena Suvari
Besides the fact that you know some spoof of either American Pie or
American Beauty was going to come, this was a pretty good mono. It's
been a year since a Spartan sketch and all they had was 20 lousy
seconds. You know back in the 95-97 era of SNL the Spartans were a
regular character every show. Also Mary Katherine showed up, hurrah.
Thank god they made a movie for this character. It got a bit old after
the first season of recurring every 2 shows. For Tracy and Lorne, man
Tracy is really chipping in a lot with his mono appearance this season.
Good mono to open up the show. I guess you had to see American Beauty to
get it, which I did not see, but as my parents said, "It's a dirty
movie, even though your younger sister saw it." What the f- happened
with that. Anyway the grade is a B.

Comm: The old Gatorade Love Bucket

This was really good. Not much to say cause it went so dam fast. Have
you noticed that Parnell and Ana always play the parents in most
skits/comm. Hmmm what ever
Grade: A-

Skit: Airport checkpoint (couldn't think of catchy title)
Good first real skit of the night. Didn't Ana remind you of that girl
from A Different World? Wasn't here name Denise. You can tell how much I
was into this skit if I'm talking about a show 7 years ago. I really
didn't find this skit that funny, but man, the crowd found it hilarious.
The only remotely funny part was Parnell's part.
Grade: C

Skit: Reno's Final episode (When were the other one's?)
Like I said in the title, this is the first time I've seen this skit
before, but fellow reviewer Mark Polishuk said that this skit is great
from the classic Spacey/Beck show. This was pretty good, the part of
Will acting as Reno is funny, but with her dancing in a club and at
schools just has to make you laugh. You sort of had a feeling that the
real Reno was coming on.
Grade: B

Interlude: No dad this is not a repeat

Skit: Rap Street (Just let me add a C, to that Rap. It'd make my day.

George Bush Sr.: Wouldn't be prudent to do such a thing.

First off there were 2 bad things about this skit that I have to get off
my chest before I give the grade.
*First- The 2 rap guys are not funny, even though Horatio is semi good.
*Second- Of all the rappers to have as the guest, Aaron Carter, What the
f- was Lorne thinking. My sister has this CD and I still can't tell if
the singer is a guy or a girl, but aside to that Mena looked just like
the kid.
Grade: N/A (I only saw the beginning and end, but I'm sure the grade
wouldn't even break a C)

Toon by Robert Smigel: The X-Presidents with a new ex
Well for the past 3 years the X President have just been 4 ex's going
around, blah, blah, blah, y'know the rest, now it should be a little
more interesting with Bill Clinton. Good toon, where's AMG. This is the
4th toon this season and no AMG. Come on Smigel.
Grade: B

Interlude: by me
I know there was no comm, between the toon and skit, but I just have to
mention something I saw earlier in the show. During commercials there
was a commercial about Sugar and Spice and the Greatest Hits of Lenny
Kravitz. If you don't know what I'm saying it's that Mena Suvari is in
that movie and that's a good way to get people to see your movie and the
same with Lenny. People now know some of his songs and will know what
kind of music he plays.

Skit: Coma Girl
If you saw the season finale of SNL in '99 this sort of had the same
premise. Girl going out with guy that she doesn't know well. In that
season finale 2 years ago, Horatio played this horn guy and Sarah
Michelle Geller played a blind girl and well you know where it went from
there, but I liked how Tracy played the part here. This was a good short
skit.
Line Alert: Whoa, Whoa. Who's Eric bitch- Tracy Morgan as the doctor
guy.
Grade: B+

Horatio: I should have played the Doctor
Greg: Horatio go back top playing the Crap Street guy. (You knew I'd say
it sometime.)

Weekend Update: Jimmy and Tina
Good update this week. As you probably don't know, I've never been a big
fan of Update since Norm so you'll see I don't go into depth on the
jokes, except the guests get recognized.

Tina's character- I haven't seen fluent other language since Phil
Hartman in that classic Reagan sketch. This was pretty good.

Jacob Silj- Well it's the same thing every time, Will talks about
something then Tina now doing what Colin did with talking about his loud
voice argues back and forth with him till his segment ends. Get a new
twist of this character cause he's pretty funny.

Darrell and Jerry- The only time I liked these 2 were actually when
Jerry wasn't part of the show in that great Update from the Cuba Gooding
Jr. show. So not much to say about these 2. Who was Jerry playing, Don
King's bro. here.

Good Update overall so the grade is a B+

Music: Lenny Kravitz
Great song and performance. Was it the light or did they change the
background for music. Looked a little different on my TV in my parent's
basement, so don't go with what I say.
Grade: A (good song, if anyone knows the name of it, please email me the
name of the song)

Skit: Veronica and Co.
You know over the years Molly's character's have gotten odder and more
messed up. This was so annoying with here voice, but somehow my friend
Matt D. found this hilarious. Don't ask? Trust me, I'm thinking he's
going to write an email to get them to make a movie on this character.
No kidding. As you can tell I didn't like this skit so I'm giving it a
D.

Interlude: by me
Y'know the 2 worst recurring characters came back for this show. 1 word
is all I'm going to say Why?

Skit: Lenny Kravitz audtitons
Lenny's second appearance tonight in sketches. Sorry I forgot to mention
him earlier. Well the Demarco's are back. They are pretty funny. They
have danced next to such talent as Britney "Deep breath, release"
Spears, Paul Simon, and now Lenny. This should have been earlier in the
show cause it was pretty funny. Tell me the difference between them and
the Spartan Cheerleaders please, (except the fact that there are 1 guy
and girl instead of 2 guys please)
Grade: A-

Music: Lenny Kravitz
This was a great song. Again I don't know the name of it, sorry folks.
Actually if you noticed at the end that the song wasn't even done and
then they rolled the picture of Mena. I was looking at my clock and it
said 12:55, so they had more time. I'm giving it an A.
Okay this show had its up's and down's. More Up's than Down's, well.
Okay now I'm doing a new segment where I sum up the show in a few
categories.

Best of the night: Clinton Opening, Reno's last Dance Party, Update
Good..compared to the 94-95 season: Veronica and Co.
Actor/ Actress of the night: Will Ferrel, between Mena and Tina

I said Tina cause she is doing a great job as Anchorperson this season.
She is a funny, talented, and beautiful person. Also for Update I'd like
to mention all the walk-on's this season that might not have been
noticed much in past reviews. Robert "Bobby" DeNiro, Gwyneth Paltrow,
and Eminem. The most mememorabale of these was DeNiro doing the tagline
for Jimmy in the classic Dana Carvey episode. One small flaw is the fact
that the tagline that Tina ends Update is, belongs to that of Jane
Curtin from the Original Not Ready for Prime Time Player gang. Oh where
have the days gone.

Okay I'm out of here for a few weeks. The next live episode is Jennifer
Lopez doing music and host. Maybe Sarah Michelle Geller will present her
just like she did for Britney last season.

Okay to sign off this week Operaman is here to end the review.

Operaman: Oh the 8th review from Greg is done. Stay tuned for SNL during
Thursday nights. My name is Operaman. Goodbye till then.

Greg: Later folks, thanks for that beautifully rhymed report Operaman.
I'm out of here. Later everyone. See you on the flip side or what we all
like to call sweeps. Maybe Sean will let us add a review for those extra
20 minutes on Thursdaysor not. Till the 10th, peace out.

Overall grade: B

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